# How do I know whether an agency is financially healthy?

**Short answer.** Four of the five numbers you need are free at the National Bank: EBITDA margin, gross margin per employee, the three-year trend and equity. Only the share of the largest client has to be asked.

Four of the five numbers you need sit free at the National Bank. You need the company number and ten minutes. On IKAg's factsheets they are already calculated, with the market median beside them.

## The five checks

- **EBITDA margin on gross margin.** Healthy above 22 percent, danger zone below 7 percent.
- **Gross margin per full-time equivalent.** Healthy above 76,000 euro, danger zone below 61,000 euro.
- **Gross margin trend.** Healthy at three years growing or stable, danger zone at two consecutive years of decline.
- **Equity.** Healthy when positive and growing, danger zone when negative.
- **Share of the largest client.** Healthy below 25 percent, danger zone above 40 percent.

The thresholds are the median and the first quartile of the Belgian agency market in financial year 2024. Everything in between is the middle half of the market: neither confirmation nor alarm, and by far the most common outcome.

## The fifth has to be asked

The share of the largest client appears in no annual accounts. That makes the question doubly useful: the answer says something about their dependence, and the willingness to answer says something about how the relationship will run.

## What to do with the result

**Five greens?** Then you probably have a supplier who will still be there when your campaign ends. It says no more than that, and that is not nothing.

**One red line?** That is a conversation topic, not grounds for rejection. An agency that explains and gives context is more informative than one that talks smoothly past it.

## The context to read alongside

In financial year 2024, 85.4 percent of Belgian agencies earned back their own operation. The odds that an agency on your longlist is healthy are high. And even on the harshest signal in this set, two consecutive years of decline, nearly three in four agencies still post a profit: that can just as easily be one large client lost as a structural problem.

These figures measure continuity risk, not quality. So do not use them to reject, use them to know which question to ask.

See also: [what a normal margin is](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/normale-marge-bureau) and [does this agency still exist](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/bestaat-dit-bureau-nog).

## Related questions

- [What is a normal margin for an agency?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/normale-marge-bureau): In financial year 2024, half of Belgian agencies sat between 7 and 22 percent EBITDA on gross margin. Anything in between is ordinary, and an agency at 15 percent is neither a bargain nor an alarm.
- [Does this agency still exist?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/bestaat-dit-bureau-nog): A website that is still up proves nothing. The Crossroads Bank for Enterprises says whether the company is still active, and the Gazette says whether it was absorbed, renamed or wound up.
- [Is an agency reliable to work with?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/is-een-bureau-betrouwbaar): Reliability is not a property of an agency but of a team, and teams turn over: in 2024 the median Belgian agency lost 34.6 percent of its staff. So ask who stays, not whether the agency is good.
- [What can I find out about an agency before I make contact?](https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq/wat-staat-er-op-een-factsheet): More than you think, and most of it is public: founding year, address, services, reference clients, awards, group structure and the filed annual accounts. IKAg puts that per agency on a factsheet.

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IKAg is the business consultant for marketing and agencies in Belgium and the Netherlands. Market figures come from the Agency Barometer, calculated on the annual accounts agencies filed with the National Bank themselves. Figures on pitches and satisfaction come from IKAg-guided processes, and are always presented as such.

- All questions: https://www.ikag.be/en/factsheets/faq
- Last updated: 2026-08-19